The Sitwell Country: Paintings and Drawings by John Piper. At
the Leicester Gallery. ARr The Sitwell Country: Paintings and Drawings by John Piper. At the Leicester Gallery.
Paintings by Michael Ayrton. At the Redfern Gallery.
MR. PIPER'S exhibition consists mainly of paintings and drawings commissioned by Sir Osbert Sitwell to illustrate his forthcoming autobiography. The patron is magnificently served, the great houses of Derbyshire suitably commemorated. But that, for Mr. Piper and for us, is only the beginning. The pictures tell their story. The facts are faithfully represented : the cliff-like facade of Hardwick ; the ruined woodland bordering the lake of Renishaw ; golden terraces and crumbling Gothic temples. Yet never were paintings less " literary." Renishaw Hall is, scrupulously, Renishaw Hall ; but it also serves as a motive in the expression of an artist's vision.
It is a powerful vision, expressed with astonishing accuracy and sureness. Contemplating these representations of great houses in their various stages of splendour and decay, one is struck by a positively dynamic effect of impermanence. This painter, one feels, has, through an extreme sensibility made articulate by extreme technical skill, managed to express the inexpressible, the transience of human achievement and human life—not symbolically, J,y a simple statement of physical decay, but directly. This seems to be the outcome of an acute and unflagging consciousness of the organic unity of all matter, and a still more extraordinary capacity for rendering this consciousness in terms of light and darkness. In " Renishaw : Roman Amazon and Warrior," spring two white marble statues on plinths of deep red brick flanking the entrance to a tall and overgniwn avenue, with the sky showing narrowly between the parallel rows of trees. Matter is.perfectly specialised into red brick, white marble, dark trees and overcast sky; and yet the plinth appears to grow from the nondescript earth, the marble Amazon is one with the bricks and mortar below and with the background foliage, the dun sky is the same stuff as the leaves of the trees. The whole is caught in a moment of time ; yet in this moment are implicit the past and the future, the origin and the end, when the most highly specialised matter will once more be resolved. In all paintings of the great houses this sense of growth and decay is favouringly present. In some (as in " Badborough Hall ") the artist seems to catch the very instant when vitality was highest. In others it is ebbing fast. Always the hero is the spirit of man, which outlasts even his most solid monuments.
In contrast to Mr. Piper, Mr. Ayrton gives the impression of a man-in search of a vision. This is a pity ; for while nothing could be less spontaneous than some of his larger symbolical paintings, such as " El Denichado " or " The Earthbound," in a number of the smaller paintings is denoted 'a true and individual vision, which suggests that certainly Mr. Ayrton is a decorative artist of original imagination, considerable technical attainment, and a most satisfying understanding of colour and line. " Entrance to a Wood," " Cornfields," " Roots," &c., are entirely successful. One has to presume, however, that Mr. Ayrton is not satisfied with these, because in- his larger and more ambitious efforts the decorative gives way to determined attempts at landscape, portraiture, or symbolism. And here, more often than not, the laboured subject is matched by a laboured technique ; and in the attempt to stylise a hillside or a woman's head nature is first sacrificed to pattern, then pattern to nature. When Mr. Ayrton is true io his simpler vision, which is brilliantly receptive with colours and patterns and shapes, but unresponsive to people and things he shows great promise and con- siderable attainment.. Let • us hope that he will cease searching for what he lacks and make what can be the very satisfying least of
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